This invention relates in general to mobile communication systems and more particularly to methods for identifying and selectively receiving calls at a mobile station.
Users of portable communication devices often encounter situations where it is desirable not to be disturbed, or where contact should be limited to a preferred group of people. Turning off the device stops incoming calls, but it prevents paging messages or high-priority calls from being received. Furthermore, the device is not readily available for immediate communication. A silent, vibrating alert feature offers an improvement, but such a feature requires the user to pick up the radio and determine the caller""s identity every time a call is received. This is considered by many users to be an annoyance, especially when the calls received are dispatch-type calls associated with a two-way radio. A radio typically transmits an acknowledgement whenever an incoming call is received, which adversely affects battery life, as do vibrating alerts and short audible alerts. Battery life is an important consideration to users of portable devices.
Business users of such devices may wish to limit, or more specifically, control call-in access to radios to ensure they are being used for business purposes. For example, it is desirable under certain circumstances to limit incoming calls to those on a pre-approved list. It is also desirable to block calls from certain callers. In both of these cases, an improvement can be realized by identifying the source of the incoming call, comparing the caller source information to an access list, and optionally blocking the call based on the result of the comparison. Thus the need exists for a method to locally block selected incoming calls.